Plugged In

"Basically, it's a visceral feeling," Cantalini says. "If I feel like something will resonate with people...if I like something this much and it resonates this much with me, then I might as well recommend it to everyone else."

And his GvB stamp of approval isn't just dependable--in many cases, it's a Midas touch. Many of his picks for the SXSW '06 Music Festival, such as Austin's Pink Nasty and Sweden's Jose Gonzalez, played to packed houses and rave reviews.

Cantalini's biggest tastemaking success came courtesy of Minnesota's Tapes 'N Tapes, whose discovery by online magazine Pitchfork Media and eventual signing to XL Recordings was preceded months earlier by Cantalini's kudos. In fact, he praised the band's self-released debut The Loon so often on his site that he convinced them to stop in Dallas on their way to SXSW for a special Gorilla vs. Bear showcase.

One week before the show, Pitchfork gave the group a rare "Best New Music" tag, sending their cred through the roof. Cantalini is reluctant to take any credit for the band's success. After all, he found the band through another national blog, Music (For Robots) (musicforrobots.com), and if Pitchfork hadn't posted the high rating, he's unsure that his numerous praise-filled posts about the band would've tipped the scales. But because the band's first post-Pitchfork concert was the Cantalini-curated gig, a blogging star was born: "That's what made people link them with me, which is fine with me. I'll take it."

Fans' growing reliance on MP3 blogs makes sense when you consider the alternatives. Only four major record labels remain (Sony/BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI) after corporate mergers in the past 10 years. Federal radio deregulation has allowed companies like Clear Channel and Infinity to buy, run and homogenize an unprecedented number of stations in every major American market. MTV has aired plenty of non-music entertainment for years, but recently even its sister "music" stations MTV2 and VH1 have slashed music content to make room for MTV's reality spillover.

The romance alone makes for a good story--small upstarts stand up to the bloated, outdated mainstream and help struggling bands with unprecedented word-of-mouth publicity. But Gorilla vs. Bear is an anomaly; most of the "big" blogs touted in City Pages, Rolling Stone and other major publications have roots in New York or Los Angeles, cities with no shortage of local music coverage and hype. In fact, people often assumed that the "Dallas" tag on the site's sidebar was a joke--and one of those people was his new employer.

"Gorilla vs. Bear is one of those great blogs that, despite the fact that it's just based in Dallas, most music fans and readers of music blogs know about the site," says Sirius Satellite Radio's Rich McLaughlin. Among other duties, he programs the network's indie-rock station, "Left of Center," and as a huge fan of MP3 blogs himself, McLaughlin debuted a new daily program three weeks ago, "Blog Radio," in which Web site operators sit in as DJs for two hours every weeknight. The current rotating hosts are NYC heavyweights Brooklyn Vegan and Product Shop NYC...and Cantalini, who records his material in Dallas and e-mails it to McLaughlin to be aired every Tuesday at 9 p.m.

"I don't think Rich knew I was in Dallas," Cantalini says. "When I finally called him back, he was like, 'Where do you live? We have no idea where. It says you live in Dallas,' but he didn't believe that." It's a big reason for his interview apprehension; GvB rarely ever talks about the Dallas music scene.

That makes his few local kudos all the more important. If he picks a band and promotes it repeatedly on both the site and his radio show, he's not just being a local cheerleader. He means it. The hometown tastemaker has recently given his attention to talented local acts such as St. Vincent, Tree Wave, The Theater Fire and--most noticeably--Midlake, who were ranked the most blogged-about band in the world by thetripwire.com as of June 5 (and yes, Cantalini was among the first to leak the Denton band's stellar new single, "Roscoe," to the entire world).

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If someone killed off all but one modern rock radio station and all but one prominent independent music publication in New York, there'd be an outrage. Los Angeles? Wouldn't happen. But the major market of Dallas has done little more than shrug its shoulders at the collapse of weekly newspaper The Met and rock stations 97.1 The Eagle and Q102. Since those changes, Dallasites have bemoaned the local scene, pointing at high-profile closures in Deep Ellum and declaring the city a musical goner.

Dallas is a peculiar music market--the contrast between its incredible, hype-worthy music and its small-town publicity is staggering. Truly, it's the ultimate place for music Web sites to make a difference, and if Cantalini is too modest to appreciate his own relevance and importance here, other local bloggers will happily do so. Or at least their kids.

"Ashley's favorite site in the world is Gorilla vs. Bear," says Cindy Chaffin, referring to her 16-year-old daughter. "She voted for GvB at the Observer Music Awards and had no problem telling me that." Chaffin laughs, sipping on a glass of Chardonnay at the Barley House's patio. She's possibly the hippest mom in town--the founder of Texas Gigs (texasgigs.com) and winner of this year's Best Music Web Site award from the Dallas Observer--and her two teenage kids still don't give her a break. "Chris [Cantalini] made a statement one time that my blog gave him sort of--I don't know if he was being honest--but gave him an incentive to [start the site], and I was like, 'See, Ashley?!'" She laughs again. "They don't think I'm cool at all."